Between 50 and 100 new cases of UFOs per month in the US 2:21
(WABNEWS) — A team of 16 experts and scientists assembled by NASA plans to publish its first report on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UFOs), also known as unidentified flying objects (UFOs), by mid-summer.
“Unidentified anomalous phenomena have really captured the attention of the public, the scientific community, and now also the US government, and we at NASA strongly believe that it is our responsibility to all work together to investigate them with the scientific scrutiny for which NASA is well known,” said Dan Evans, associate assistant administrator for Research, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
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“We order [al equipo] to help NASA come up with a roadmap, a roadmap that doesn’t necessarily go back to previous grainy images, that kind of recognizes that historically we’ll never be able to get to the bottom of a lot of NIAPs because the data is so poor quality.” said Evans, this Wednesday.
“We’re trying to assess whether these events pose any security risks and we’re doing that using science,” Evans added. “NASA believes that the tools of science are applied to the study [de] FANIs because they allow us to separate fact from fiction. And it’s all part of NASA’s commitment to exploring the unknown, and to do it with the openness, transparency and candor that we’re well accustomed to providing to the public.”
The comments came during a news conference on Wednesday, after NASA held an hours-long public meeting led by its independent study team that is categorizing and evaluating UFO data.
FANI “are events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena from a scientific perspective,” according to NASA.
The term FANI, which originally meant unidentified aerial phenomena, was modified by the National Defense Authorization Law, enacted in December, according to Evans. The change came in recognition of the fact that the search for FANI must also include near-space and underwater phenomena, he said.
The space agency has already pointed out that the limited number of FANI observations makes it difficult to draw scientific conclusions about the nature of these phenomena.
“The report will guide NASA on possible data that could be collected in the future to shed light on the nature and origin of NIAPs,” according to the agency.
The nine-month studybegan on October 24, 2022, and the team – which held its final deliberations on Wednesday – will publish a report at the end of July.
NASA begins studying unidentified aerial phenomena this Monday 0:44
The agency’s independent study team includes 16 scientists and experts from a variety of fields—astrobiology, data science, oceanography, genetics, politics, and planetary science—as well as retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, a former fighter pilot. , test pilot and retired US Navy captain. The team is led by astrophysicist David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation in New York.
During the hearing, Kelly reflected on her experiences in spaceflight and atmospheric flight, saying that both are “very, very conducive to optical illusions.”
Study unidentified anomalous phenomena
The objective of the group is not to determine the true nature of the FANI, which have been seen moving through restricted military airspace during the last decades. Instead, the team’s approach has been to outline how to assess and study unidentified anomalous phenomena using data and technology.
“We went through a data-gathering phase, which continues with today’s hearing, and I think what we’ve seen is that many events have conventional explanations,” Spergel said. “We saw more of this today and many of these events are commercial aircraft, civilian and military drones, weather and research balloons, military equipment, weather events and ionospheric events. That being said, there are still events that we don’t understand.”
Spergel noted that such events have limited or poor-quality data, stressing that one of the team’s lessons is that more high-quality data, as well as multiple observations, are needed to assess events.
“We get approximately 50 to 100 new reports a month,” said Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick of the US Department of Defense at the public meeting. Kirkpatrick is the director of the new Office of All Domains Anomaly Resolution, dedicated to the study of FANI.
Kirkpatrick said the number has risen to more than 800 FANI cases since he told Congress there were 650 cases in April “because I finally managed to integrate the data from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).” . The data has been collected over 27 years, and Kirkpatrick stressed that the numbers will continue to change on a weekly basis.
He also cautioned that the number of cases that are “possibly really abnormal” was “between 2 and 5 percent.” Kirkpatrick defined “anomalous” as “anything that is not readily understandable to the operator or sensor.”
The team has not yet provided NASA with any recommendations, which will be included in the report due in July. But Spergel and the other members of the team discussed their preliminary ideas for improving global surveillance of NIAPs.
Instead of satellites, which can only monitor small portions of most of the planet at very low resolution, the team is interested in enlisting the help of citizen scientists.
Given that there are between 3 and 4 billion mobile phones around the world, Spergel says that developing an app that people can use to record data and upload it to a website for NIAP tracking would be “a great opportunity to citizen science”.
There have been several studies on NIAPs carried out by various branches of the US government, including a pentagon report which was declassified in June 2021, although none have given the public a clear answer as to what the FANI could be.
the search for life
NASA set out long ago to find life elsewhere, so astrobiology programs are part of the agency’s goals. He explorer perseverance is currently looking for signs of ancient life that may have existed on Mars, while future missions are under development to search for signs of life on oceanic worlds in our solar system.
Given the national and aviation security issues that have arisen with FANI, scientists want to analyze the observations and establish whether they are natural or need to be explained in another way.
According to the researchers, the study is unclassified, in the public domain, and does not include data from military or intelligence agencies.
“NASA’s interest in FANI differs from that of the Pentagon and the intelligence community,” Evans stated. “We see real advantages in this team only working with unclassified data. Because when you limit yourself to that kind of data, you can freely collaborate with academia, with industry, and with international partners. We need as many eyes on this issue as possible “.
The intent of the study is to propose a research program that can be launched once the researchers evaluate the data that exists and needs to be reviewed.
“There is absolutely no convincing evidence of extraterrestrial life associated with FANI,” Evans said. “I think when we put together this amazing team, we did it with an acknowledgment of the fact that we need to come up with an answer without assuming an origin going in.”
While astrobiology focuses on the search for life, studying NIAPs has its own goals that aren’t necessarily connected, Evans said. But ever since it was announced, in June 2022, members of the independent study team have faced harassment online.
“Each of our team members is a respected authority in their field,” said Evans. “They have massive, complete and total support. And this is hard work. This is serious work. And if we really want to respect the sanctity of the scientific process, we have to allow science to be free, and that freedom follows directly of the absence of harassment to this incredible team of panelists”.
WABNEWS’s Katie Hunt, Michael Conte and Jackie Wattles contributed to this article.
